I could not say what I thought. I expelled my breath noisily through puffed cheeks and shook my head.
"Well?" He was insistent. "Will you do it? It will mean rough treatment for the next few weeks, but it will save the Colony, and it will clear your name."
I got up and poured myself a cup of wine from the jug on the table, staring pensively into the drink as I reviewed everything he had said. "My name has never been clouded, Cay. It has never been known to my enemies. All they've had is my description. Truthfully, I'm not transported with joy by your idea. I wish I had your confidence in my welfare." I emptied the cup in one gulp. "At the same time, from every other viewpoint but my own, I can see that it will work. It's brilliant. I only wish somebody else could perform my role in it. But you're right, it has to be me. Nobody else would do for Seneca's well-being what I will ... I only hope you're equally correct about the rest of it."
He threw his arms around me. "I am. Trust me."
"I'll trust you." I found a smile for him from somewhere. "But your sister's going to have your balls for this."
He smiled briefly, a wintry little grin. "Leave Luceiia to me. She is my sister and she knows what duty means, and what it sometimes entails. In the meantime, you are going to have to change into other clothes. Old clothes, and dirty. You have to look as unsavoury as your calling would make you."
I looked him straight in the eye, smiling. "No great difficulty in that, for a smith. Charcoal, soot, smoke and ashes and old, sweaty, smelly clothes. I'll look disreputable enough, even for you." Suddenly my smile dried up and my stomach churned and my voice lost all its levity. "This is really going to be rough, isn't it?"
He clasped my hand. "Aye, my friend, rough, but temporary."
XII
It was almost dark by the time Vegetius Sulla opened the door of the stone hut that had become my prison. I was lying on the straw-covered floor, my arms and legs aching from the chains I wore. My left eye was swollen completely shut and crusted with blood where Vegetius himself had hit me with his sword hilt earlier. He stepped inside and squatted beside me.
"They're ready for you, Publius. The audience is assembled and the circus is prepared. Caius has told them all about you and how we captured you, and of our plans for you. Now they're waiting to see you. How do you feel?"
I tried to lick my sore lips, split by a backhanded blow when they first brought me here, and croaked, "Give me a drink." It tasted like nectar. I swallowed and spat. "How do I feel? That's a damned stupid question. How do I look?"
Vegetius winced. "Awful, and you stink like a goat, too. Exactly like a filthy, evil bandit who has been properly beaten since being captured."
"Good, that's how I'm supposed to look."
"Can you stand up?"
I tried. "No. You're going to have to help me."
He snapped a command and one of our young soldiers stepped into the hut and stopped there, his eyes widening as he looked at me in horror.
"Help the prisoner to his feet."
The young man bent to obey, handling me as if I were fragile, sheer reverence in his eyes. When I stood upright, Vegetius shoved a spear shaft through the space between my bent elbows and my back, pinioning me and stretching the chain on my manacled wrists across my belly.
The young soldier's eyes worried me.
"Wait!" They stopped and looked at me and I spoke to the young man, mouthing my words carefully with my broken lips. "Look, lad, this is being done for a purpose. Was that explained to you?" He nodded. "Good. Then get that look off your face. If they see it in there, you'll betray all of us. This is only mummery, but it has to look genuine. Remember, I am not Publius Varrus. I'm a captured rebel — a murderer and a bandit. I am a prisoner, and if you feel anything towards me at all, it should be indifference mixed with malice. Understand?" He nodded again. "All right then, make your face a mask and knock me down, hard. Then haul me back up and drag my butt in to Caius Britannicus."
He looked to Vegetius for confirmation.
Vegetius nodded. "Do it, hard, and treat him like cattle from now on. If these people suspect our motives, he's a dead man."
The young man set his jaw and swung the flat of his sword, knocking me off my feet and out of action.
I regained my senses as they dragged me in front of Caius and his visitors. I had two guards, one on either side of me grasping each end of the spear shaft across my back, carrying it on their shoulders so that my feet swung clear of the ground and all my weight hung from my tortured shoulder joints. I did not have to worry about acting, for my predicament and the pain it caused were very real. I heard someone snap an order to halt and the two guards carrying me stopped short and lowered my feet to the floor. My knees folded and I would have fallen had they not taken up the tension again and held me erect. I bit down hard, trying to pull myself together, and I heard what sounded like someone moaning in the distance. "Luceiia," I thought, "be strong! Don't let them see your pain." But the moaning went on, and I realized that it was me. I stopped it and hung there, supported by my guards.
"This is a general?" The voice was loaded with disdain. It was deep, and quite pleasant in pitch. I could not place it as belonging to the Seneca I remembered.
"No," Caius answered, "not a general, Claudius Seneca, merely a leader of rebels, that is all."
"He doesn't look much like a leader to me."
Caius sounded as though he was pleasantly relaxed, sprawling backwards in his chair as he spoke. "I will admit he looks a little more worn and a lot less warlike than when we took him. Without his armour and his weapons, and without his rebels, he has shrunk to human proportions. A week ago, however, I can assure you his reputation was fearsome and his depredations formidable."
The deep voice sounded bored. "Formidable out here in this backwater, perhaps. Elsewhere, he would have been a gnat to be swatted casually. The fellow is obviously a deserter. Hang him, I say, and have done with him."
"No." Caius again. I was surprised by the ease with which I could hear them discussing me. I was very close to their table. "No, he should be taken in an open cage to Londinium, to serve as an example, as I have said. He is a rebel. His humiliation should be public, and spectacular — used to discourage others from emulating him. To hang him out of hand would serve no useful purpose."
"I disagree." There was a note of petulance in the heavy voice now. "He would be dead. Deserters are to be executed immediately upon apprehension."
"This is no deserter, Senator. At least, I do not think so. He is a veteran, certainly, but I doubt that he deserted. The fellow is crippled. It is an old wound and a grave one; it would have ended his service."
"Nonsense, Caius Britannicus! He could have taken a wound at any time."
"Not that one, Senator. Not if he were a deserter. It would have killed him. He could not have recovered from a wound like that outside of a military hospital."
There was a long silence after this when no one spoke at all, and I could feel the eyes of all of them on me. Then that voice spoke again, sullen, like that of a spoiled child speaking through an adult's mouth.
"By all the ancient gods, Caius Britannicus, you are a tedious man! My men have travelled with me all across this land to draw some blood and you have robbed them of their just satisfaction! How could you have done all you have said, fought the engagement that you have described, and taken but one prisoner?" He paused as though waiting for a reply, and when none came the strangely whining, petulant, bass-voiced complaint continued. "You have no answer? Then let me tell you what I think. I think you might be making more of this than was the case. I think you would like us to believe that you have won a major victory here, when all that happened was a minor squabble. I think that tomorrow we will ride with you to view the ruins of this rebel's camp and count the bodies of his slain companions, and I think that we had better — "